XML and db and director

[brightface]

Ok heres a biggi

I have a project that requires me to work with xml.
The requirement is to produce a director interface and hook that up to a dbase

Has anyone used a director interface with a database and can I use xml too
Does anyone have any experience with this

Thank

Patric

[Ex Malterra]

I've used xml with authorware allot and director a little. i use
director 8.5, dunno if the xml parser is any different in mx or mx
2004.

here is a good refference document:
[url]http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/internet/using_xml_parser_xtra/[/url]

what it boils down to is you have to read in the xml file and store
the data in some way. i make a property list from it. the parser will
make a property list for you, but i find it's easier for me to
understand mine than the one the parser creates. if you make any
changes to the data you have to re-write the xml file to reflect those
changes. here's a code snippet from a task list application i made
that stores task data in an xml file. this is the handler that writes
the updated xml file after data has been manipulated. the global
variable currentXml is the property list that's created when the
application launches and reads in the xml file.

global currentXml

on generateXml
-- write header and main tag
xmlText = "<?xml version=" & quote & "1.0" & quote & "?>" & return &
\
"<taskList lastModified=" & quote & the date & quote & ">" & return
-- write task tags
repeat with counter = 1 to currentXml.count
thisTag = "<task taskNumber=" & quote & counter & quote & "
createdDate=" & quote & currentXml[counter][1][2] & quote & "
dueDate=" & quote & currentXml[counter][1][3] & quote & "
completeDate=" & quote & currentXml[counter][1][4] & quote & ">" &
return & tab & "<taskTitle>" & currentXml[counter][2] & "</taskTitle>"
& return -- title tag
-- comment tags
if (currentXml[counter][3].count <> 0) then
repeat with counter2 = 1 to currentXml[counter][3].count
thisComment = tab & "<statusComment commentNumber=" & quote &
currentXml[counter][3][counter2][1] & quote & " dateCommentAdded=" &
quote & currentXml[counter][3][counter2][2] & quote & ">" &
currentXml[counter][3][counter2][3] & "</statusComment>" & return
thisTag = thisTag & thisComment
end repeat
end if
thisTag = thisTag & "</task>" & return
xmlText = xmlText & thisTag
end repeat
xmlText = xmlText & "</taskList>"
-- write xml file
xmlFileWriter = new(xtra "fileio")
createFile(xmlFileWriter, "taskList.xml")
openFile(xmlFileWriter, "taskList.xml", 0)
-- clear file
writeString(xmlFileWriter, "")
repeat while (error(xmlFileWriter, status(xmlFileWriter)) <> "OK")
nothing
end repeat
-- write new data
writeString(xmlFileWriter, xmlText)
repeat while (error(xmlFileWriter, status(xmlFileWriter)) <> "OK")
nothing
end repeat
xmlFileWriter = 0
return 1
end generateXml

the xml file it writes will look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<taskList lastModified="1/19/2004">
<task taskNumber="1" createdDate="10/17/2003" dueDate="10/22/2003"
completeDate="0">
<taskTitle>This is some task.</taskTitle>
<statusComment commentNumber="1" dateCommentAdded="10/18/2003">This
is a comment about this task.</statusComment>
</task>
<task taskNumber="2" createdDate="10/17/2003" dueDate="11/12/2003"
completeDate="0">
<taskTitle>This is another task.</taskTitle>
<statusComment commentNumber="1" dateCommentAdded="11/09/2003">This
is a comment about task number 2.</statusComment>
</task>
</taskList>